Google Pulls Pirate Bay From Search Results

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Google Pulls Pirate Bay From Search Results

The homepage of Pirate Bay disappeared from Google's search results Friday, after Google allegedly received a DMCA takedown notice targeting the site.

The move is unexpected because, while the Pirate Bay is rife with pirated material, the site's spare landing page contains no content to speak of – just links, a logo and a search box. By law, DMCA notices are targeted to specific infringing content.

(Update: Google restored the search result Friday afternoon)

The notice came from Destined Enterprises, according to Chilling Effects.org, which works with Google to catalog DMCA notices sent to the search engine. Destined Enterprises operates a copyright policing business called Remove Your Content that specializing in taking down pirated copies of adult films on behalf of the copyright owner. But that company said Friday that it didn't deliberately target the Bay's landing page.

"We're looking into this," wrote Eric Green, owner of Remove Your Content. "It appears to be a mistake or a malicious third-party submittal."

"Our records do not reflect that any takedown notice to Google for the homepage of the www.thepiratebay.org was sent," the company wrote in a followup statement. "We are unable to provide further information or clarification until we are provided a copy of the alleged takedown notice by Google. Despite requests to Google, we have not yet been provided with a copy."

Searches for the Bay on Google still produce copious links to Pirate Bay, including to the torrent site's Top 100 list of torrents, and its blog. But the main URL is omitted, and a notice on the bottom of the search results explains that Google acted in "response to a complaint we received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act."

The DMCA generally provides immunity from copyright lawsuits to companies that respond to takedown notices. Such notices have to specify the content at issue, and include a sworn statement that the issuer owns the content, or is acting as the agent's owner.

The law does not oblige the recipient of such a notice to reject overreaching or misfired takedown requests, no matter how obvious.